A mixed bag of babies and a blog

Marriage

09/16/2010

My life is about to change. I have anxiety and fear over this change. And I also feel relief and impending love.

We are about to move Jocelyn to her toddler bed. I’m imagining there will be tears and shrieking. And when I stop crying and shrieking, she’ll probably get up out of bed and roam around the house. We’ve considered buying bubble-wrap to cover all exposed surfaces. Maybe a Velcro suit and matching sheets that can keep her from moving too far?

Aja’s sleep habits have prompted this move. I’m glad she’s growing, but she’s getting too big for the bassinet and needs to move into the crib. She was a sleeping baby, but now she wakes in the night because she has no space to move and roll. Some mornings (is 3am really the morning?) she decides that she is wide-awake, and a bottle only fuels her energy and she wants to play.

It’s going to be tough. It may be ugly. But we’ll make the transition and have our room back. Let’s hope that doesn’t lead to more children.

09/13/2010

I recently met the mole that resides
in the space between my shoulder blades and we had a conversation. We
talked about how we’ve always been acquaintances but have never really
met, how we saw each other in a bar once and nodded like we knew each
other, but then later criticized one another’s wardrobe. We even talked
about what would happen if we got into a fight. I have no doubt that I
would win. But it would be a hard fought fight, and I wanted to be sure
that if I were to lose—really lose—my wishes would be carried out. At
the top of the list: what steps need to be taken so that my husband
never marries a twenty-three-year-old waitress.

If moles were to attack, I want my money
back. The money that I spent on the wedding, the births, and the
subsequent feeding and clothing of my two girls. Because we have plans,
and those plans include a lot more than dirty diapers and ear-splitting
tantrums. This is not to say that I have not loved every minute of
these early stages in my girls’ lives. Actually, I haven’t loved every
minute. But I’ve loved a lot of minutes, and the minutes become hours,
and I watch their personalities continue to take a bigger chair at the
dinner table.

Jocelyn talks with her hands a lot, and
she is especially good at emphasizing her story with her pointer
finger. I imagine she’ll be a teacher, or a dictator. A dictator that
dances, because she really does love to dance. Aja spends most mornings
practicing a yell, deep from her gut. It sometimes has a gurgle to it,
but often it’s just long and loud. For a baby that was born with
underdeveloped lungs, she is really using them quite well. I imagine
she’ll be a sportscaster, for soccer. GOOOOAAALLL!

We’ve talked about renewing our vows in
the future, probably when we hit twenty years. It’s a long way off
(we’re just short of year three) but there are a few things set in
stone. I’ll finally get my Vegas wedding, we’ll have a small group of
friends and family in attendance, and we will once again write our own
vows. During the first go-around I procrastinated on my vows and wrote
them the night before with a little wine in my system for good measure.

The next time, I’ll have years of wedded bliss in my pocket and the words will have true meaning:

You haven’t driven me crazy yet.

I still love how you make me laugh.

Let’s drink more wine.

Getting back to that waitress. We used to
work in a restaurant, and in restaurants there’s always that girl—we’ll
name her Beth-a-ho—and she’s almost always twenty-three. She doesn’t
care about wedding rings, or babies, or bedtimes. Khary has been
instructed that if something were to happen to me he is never ever
allowed to remarry a girl that is younger than he is, and our
daughter’s will understand this demand. So if he ever were to show up
with a Beth-a-ho on his arm, they’ll know to take her out back and kick
the shit out of her.

Hypochondria runs in my family, so the
mole on my back, which has always been there, really shouldn’t concern
me. Although if I told my Uncle he would probably say it was lupus (he
swore he had it but he’s since been cured by fish oil). I just happened
to glance at my back in the mirror and the mole raised its little hand
and said hello. It was a unique moment—unique because it was Saturday
and I was able to look in the mirror for a moment, pluck my eyebrows,
and take a nice long shower, uninterrupted.

I look forward to next Saturday when I can talk to cellulite that has formed on my ass.

I am participating in the Back to Blogging event run by SITS
(The Secret is in the Sauce). Today's assignment is to re-upload a post
that we wish that more people had read. This was originally a guest post I
wrote for {Not Quite} Susie Homemaker. My mole and I thought it was good enough to be shared a second time.

09/02/2010

Fall really is the most wonderful time of the year. I’ve always been a fan of summer—with the sun streaking through my hair and the sand writhing between my toes—but as I grow older I have to put on sun-BLOCK and sand is just sandy. There’s a feeling in fall that can’t be matched. James Rohl calls it the new New Year. A time when we can wear long sleeved shirts and sip pumpkin spice latte’s. Football begins, which right now is preceded by Jocelyn learning the Redskins fight song, and baseball ends (we’ve almost taught her Take Me Out to the Ballgame), and we can sit together and root and cheer, free from whatever stress is billowing outside of our living room.

We celebrate anniversaries in the fall, and birthdays, and this year perhaps an almost-birthday (Aja was supposed to be born in late-November, but she had other plans). It’s a few months of love and happiness all rolled into a pumpkin pie. This year we look forward to Jocelyn expanding her vocabulary, Aja getting closer to taking her first steps, and the two of them playing the cat and mouse game that is Sisters. Fall reminds us that we have plans. Since getting married almost three years ago, almost nothing has gone according to plan. This year, I'm sure, will be no different.

07/19/2010

I was set to make pancakes for breakfast yesterday, but before I did, Khary cleaned up the kitchen from the night before. He started the dishwasher and then said it was all clear for me to start.

Pancakes don’t require too much, but nearly everything I needed was in the dishwasher. Measuring cups, spoons, wisk, spatula. Throw in the butter and flour and it’d make itself in between the wash and dry cycle. BUT WAIT, we were out of butter! Because Khary used it all the night before while preparing the chicken—right after the conversation we had about it being our last stick of butter. Did I mention the chicken was for Sunday night’s dinner and I was not aware that he was melting and coating chicken with our last stick of butter?

After many minutes of mumbling and cursing, he asked me what was wrong. When I told him, he said that it wasn’t his fault.

Me: “I know it’s not your fault. We just pay attention to different things.”

Him: “Well, I’m a guy, and you’re a girl, and yeah, I pay attention to different things.”

06/25/2010

I have a guest post today over at {Not Quite} Susie. Hers is a really great blog; so when you stop by, look around a bit. I’m not just saying that because she thinks I’m funny, but it helps. My post is everything that a post should be—I talk about renewed vows, moles, restaurants, and Beth-a-ho’s. Khary read it last week and afterward we had the following exchange: